An Anonymous Girl(58)

So how could Thomas be her husband? Yet Dr. Shields clearly knows him; she called him by name at the end of our meeting.

“Your wife?” I echo. Nausea roils my stomach and my head begins to spin. I stare down at the sidewalk to ground myself.

“Yes, Lydia Shields.” I hear him take a deep breath, like he’s trying to steady himself, too. “We’ve been married for seven years. Although we’re separated now.”

“I don’t believe you,” I blurt.

There’s no way Dr. Shields, with her rules about honesty, would have created such an elaborate lie.

“Meet me and I’ll tell you everything,” he says. “That book sticking out of your bag . . . The Morality of Marriage. She wrote it a few years ago. I read the first draft in our living room. That’s how I knew she was behind this.”

I wrap my free arm around myself, bracing myself against the blustery wind.

One of them is lying. But who?

“I’m not meeting you until you prove you’re really her husband,” I tell Thomas.

“I’ll get proof,” he says. “In the meantime, promise me you won’t say a word to her about seeing me.”

But I can’t agree. This interaction could be a test. Maybe Dr. Shields wants me to prove my loyalty.

I’m about to hang up on Thomas when he says one final thing.

“Please, Jess, just be careful. You’re not the first.”

His words land like a physical blow. I feel myself recoil.

“What do you mean?” I whisper.

“She preys on young women like you.”

I’m frozen in place.

“Jess?” I hear him repeat my name. But I can’t speak.

Finally, I disconnect the call. I slowly lower my phone and look up.

Dr. Shields is two feet away.

I gasp and instinctively shrink back.

She materialized out of nowhere, like an apparition. She isn’t wearing a coat to protect her against the elements. She’s standing there, motionless, except for her hair, which is whipping in the wind. How much of my conversation did she overhear?

Adrenaline floods my body.

“Dr. Shields!” I cry. “I didn’t see you there!”

She looks me up and down, as if assessing me. Then she stretches out her clenched hand and slowly unfurls her fingers.

“You forgot your lip balm, Jessica.”

I stare at her, trying to make sense of it. She followed me all this way just to return my lip balm?

I have an almost uncontrollable urge to blurt out everything Thomas has just said. If she set this all up, she knows anyway.

Prey.

The term Thomas used is chilling. I can almost see Dr. Shields’s lips forming that exact word as she stroked the crown of the glass falcon in her office a few weeks ago. The falcon that she told me was a gift for her husband.

I take a step forward. Then another.

Now I’m so close I can glimpse the vertical furrow between her eyebrows, so faint and shallow it’s almost like a crack in a piece of glass.

“Thank you,” I whisper as I take the lip balm. My bare fingers are numb from the cold.

She looks down at the phone I’m still holding in my other hand.

My chest tightens. I can’t breathe.

“I’m glad I caught you,” she says, then she turns to go.





CHAPTER


THIRTY-EIGHT


Sunday, December 16

Ninety minutes after your lip balm is returned, the doorbell rings.

A glance through the peephole reveals Thomas. He is so close to the small circle of glass that his face appears distorted.

This is a surprise.

His presence was unannounced.

The deadbolt is disengaged and the heavy front door swings open.

“Sweetheart, what brings you here?”

One arm is hidden behind his back.

He smiles and pulls it forward, revealing an enormous bouquet of paper-white narcissi.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he says.

“How lovely!”

He is welcomed inside.

He must have read the text with your invitation by now; it was sent several hours ago. Why is he really here?

Perhaps he has come to prove his fidelity by revealing your invitation.

A hand is placed on his arm. He is offered a warm drink.

“No, thanks, I just had coffee,” he says.

It is as though he is providing an entryway into the very topic that weighs heavily on both of our minds.

“Of course. You love the coffee at Ted’s Diner.” A light laugh. “And your fried eggs, buttered bagel, and extra bacon.”

“Yup, the usual.”

A pause.

Perhaps it is difficult for him to know where to begin.

A prompt could be helpful: “So, breakfast was good?”

His eyes dart around the living room. Evasion or unease?

“Uneventful,” he responds.

This could be interpreted in two ways. One is that his encounter with you was inconsequential. The other is that he is actively concealing it.

“Shouldn’t you place those in water?” Thomas is staring at the bouquet.

“Of course.” We retreat to the kitchen. The green stems are snipped, and a porcelain vase is retrieved from a cabinet.